Making Side Income

Everyone needs some side income once in a while...when I was working full-time I did freelance work to help pay down my student loans (which are still haunting me) and to have extra money for trips and Christmas presents.

Now that I freelance full-time, I am still always looking for ways to make side income for even greater trips and a bigger savings account (as well as still paying down that pesky student loan debt).

There are several ways to make side income on the weekends or evenings. They include:

• Freelancing (painting, moving, writing, designing...)
• Buying and selling items at storage auctions
• Selling owned items on eBay
• Reselling concert tickets (if legal in your state or city)
• Babysitting
• Being a server or bartender
• Helping people move
• Lawn mowing
• Pet sitting
• Selling goods on Etsy or Fiverr

and so many more!

Do you earn a side income? Have you tried storage auctions or Etsy yet? Let me know!

Finding Polish Pottery Prices

Because I am a new homeowner, I still am constantly finding new home decor or improvement projects and ideas, especially because of Pinterest. One such find are beautiful Polish Pottery pieces, which can get quite pricey. The Polish are well-known for their pottery pieces, and they can become valuable collector's pieces or family heirlooms.

Thanks to the internet, sites like Polish Pottery Store make finding the most reasonable prices on Polish pottery a reality. I really love this Polish Pottery Bowl (pictured in this post), and the website helped me find it for around $60. What a great deal! We have glass cabinets at our house, so this would look great in those.

Next time I need some more Polish Pottery, I'll certainly check out Polish Pottery Store again!

It's Tax Time!

Tax time is fast approaching, and luckily, we have an accountant this go-round to make sure that we don't make any mistakes and pay any remaining taxes that are left over from my consulting and freelance work.

I enjoy owning my own business, and especially being my own boss, but I will say that the whole tax and financial side of the business can definitely get overwhelming at times. Accountants and Attorneys can definitely make the process easier and help prevent any penalties or legislation against you or your business.

That is definitely a "worse case scenario" situation, but it always helps to be prepared and have people on your side who know what to do in these situations. I always feel less anxious and more calm whenever I have a professional guiding me through a difficult or stressful process that I haven't experienced before.

Have you done your taxes yet? Did you get a refund?

This post was sponsored by Florida Tax Solvers, which helps individuals with their Florida Tax Return.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is becoming the "next big thing", mainly because avid internet and technology users are finding it hard (not to mention risky) to have all of their files, including music, stored onto their computer's hard drive.

Cloud hosting involves hosting files "in the cloud", which means they are stored via a remote server and can be accessed almost anywhere (and usually from any computer) through the internet. Cloud Hosting users appreciate this flexibility as well, as they can still access files when they are away from their home office or computer.

Many services, such as HostZilla, offer FREE Cloud Hosting up to 100MB. They also make it easy to upgrade for as low as $15/year, which is only a little bit more than $1 a month. That is a small price to pay for unlimited cloud web space.

The HostZilla website is easy to navigate and simple to use. It outlines available features easily and I would definitely recommend it.

Tiny House Design

The tiny or small home movement has been something that I have been very interested in. I appreciate that some people are willing to only build houses that are "big enough" instead of huge mansions that total 30,000 square feet and beyond.

I always tell my husband that if I won the lottery I wouldn't want to move, because our 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house is just the perfect size for us and our first child (whenever we have one). However, if it was just me, I wouldn't definitely look into utilizing small house floor plans, like the ones featured on Cozy Home Plans.

This site specializes in floor plans that range from 208- 781 square feet. Some are so pretty, and much more affordable than houses that are much larger. The biggest floor plan currently featured on the site is the High Point, pictured here to the right. It is two stories and definitely doesn't look like it's only 781 square feet!

To learn more about tiny home floor plans, you should check out the Cozy Home Plans site or this interesting blog post: Viva La Tiny Revolution: Why We’re Building a Little House

Juicing It

Guest post by Gerard Mcdaniel

The other night my husband logged on to satellitetvcincinnatioh.com to look for great deals for Ohio movie channels. He is very interested in the concept of doing a juice-cleanse, so he wanted to watch the movie, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. It is a personal documentary about a man who was overweight and sick with an auto-immune disease that had wrecked his body. He was taking numerous prescription drugs each day including blood pressure medication and steroids to control the inflammation present in his body. All of his years of bad eating habits and reduced exercise had left him feeling as if he was living under a death sentence. What this man decided to do was make a total change in the way he viewed food. He stopped depending on food as a fix for his emotional issues or personal problems. Instead, he began to look at food as nourishment for the mind and the body. He began eating only raw fruits and vegetables in juice from. Over the course of his sixty-day experiment, he dropped a huge amount of weight, detoxified his body, and eliminated the auto-immune disease from his system permanently. His blood counts and level s moved back within a healthy normal range. The physical, mental, and emotional transformation was unreal. He is a motivation for us all to change the way we view food as well as the way we nourish our bodies if we wish for a lifetime of health.

Making the Most of Your Self Storage Facility

When you become a self storage facility owner, it's important to realize the positive impact that having one or several self storage properties can have on a real estate portfolio.

Because self storage properties usually have less employees and are mainly self-sufficient, they have lower overhead costs when compared to other types of real estate, such as higher utilities and repair and cleaning costs. What's more, self storage facility laws allow owners to auction off a tenant's belongings when they don't pay their self storage rental fees for a certain number of months (which may vary, depending on state and country laws). The winner of the self storage auction has to clean out the unit in 24-48 hours, again depending on the laws and rules of the facility.

Other ways to make the most of a self storage facility is to market it properly so the facility can operate at full or near-full capacity. This ensures that the facility is generating the highest amount of revenue possible. There are several ways to market, including search engine advertising, website marketing, blogging, social media, mail campaigns, and more. Traditional and online marketing strategies, as well as advertising specials and events, can all be viable options for increasing revenue at a self storage facility.